Trump Is Calling To Ramp Up The Murderous Sanctions On Venezuela

Trump Wants To Ramp Up The Murderous Sanctions That Have Caused Untold Suffering In Venezuela.

Pictured Above: Donald Trump and Venzuelan President Nicolas Maudro speaking seperatley at the UN.

In a recent “Truth Social” post, President Donald Trump said:

We are hereby reversing the concessions that Crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela, on the oil transaction agreement, dated November 26, 2022, and also having to do with Electoral conditions within Venezuela, which have not been met by the Maduro regime. Additionally, the regime has not been transporting the violent criminals that they sent into our Country (the Good Ole’ U.S.A.) back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to. I am therefore ordering that the ineffective and unmet Biden “Concession Agreement” be terminated as of the March 1st option to renew. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

To explain what he means by this further, Reuters noted that he was signaling support for “reversing a license given to Chevron to operate in Venezuela by his predecessor Joe Biden more than two years ago”.

What Trump is really signaling is support for putting the “maximum pressure” sanctions back on Venezuela’s oil sector.

In this article, I will review the devastating effect these sanctions have had on the population in Venezuela and what the real motives for the sanctions are.

Experts Expose The Murderous Effects Of Venezuela Sanctions.

In a detailed study, economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs found that the sanctions on Venezuela from 2018-2019 alone caused “an estimated more than 40,000 deaths” and “fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population”.

Weisbrot and Sachs noted that:

One result of the sanctions is to deprive the Venezuelan economy of many billions of dollars of foreign exchange needed to pay for essential and life-saving imports.

They concluded that this led to “300,000 people” being “estimated to be at risk because of lack of access to medicines or treatment”.

They also noted that the sanctions have drastically decreased food imports, writing that “Food imports have dropped sharply along with overall imports; in 2018 (when the sanctions were in place) they were estimated at just $2.46 billion, as compared with $11.2 billion in 2013” (when there were far fewer sanctions).

Sachs and Weisbrot noted that the relief of these sanctions could have stopped 40,000 excess deaths, writing that:

Thus one of the most important impacts of the sanctions, in terms of its effects on human life and health, is to lock Venezuela into a downward economic spiral. For this reason, it is important to note that when we look at, for example the estimated more than 40,000 excess deaths that occurred just from 2017 to 2018, the counterfactual possibility in the absence of sanctions is not just zero excess deaths, but actually a reduction in mortality and other improvements in health indicators. That is because an economic recovery could have already begun in the absence of economic sanctions.

(Emphasis: Mine)

The former top UN official Alfred de Zayas has noted that while the aforementioned study focused on the impact of sanctions on Venezuela from 2018 to 2019, the overall effect is likely closer to 100,000 excess deaths from the sanctions.

At the time, some had disputed the claim that “an economic recovery could have begun in the absence of economic sanctions” but a Venezuelan opposition economist proved this to be the case.

Venezuelan Oppostion Eceonomist’s Bombshell.

The “smoking gun” proving the U.S. sanctions were having a major impact on the economic situation in Venezuela actually came from a bombshell study written by one of Venezuela’s top opposition economists, Francisco Rodríguez.

His study found that after Venezuela’s oil production crashed in 2016, the U.S. sanctions always correlated with the country’s inability to recover.

Pictured Above: The “bombshell” in Francisco Rodríguez’s study.

Rodriguez noted that joint ventures with foreign multinationals are what allowed Venezuela to have a stable oil output in 2008-2015, and these joint ventures were explicitly hit by the economic sanctions. As he wrote:

these joint ventures became islands of productivity in the country’s oil sector and generated pockets of growth that contributed to the stabilization of output in the 2008–2015 period. It would be these joint ventures with foreign multinationals that would be particularly hit by the 2017–2020 sanctions.

Rodriguez also noted that oil industry analysts were predicting that Venezuela’s oil output would recover by 2017. This proves that there were no economic factors within Venezuela that stopped oil production and the failure to recover was in fact a result of U.S. sanctions. As he wrote:

oil industry analysts were predicting a stabilization of Venezuelan oil output, and economic analysts were predicting modest economic growth fueled by the recovery of oil prices as late as mid-2017.24 The severe decline in oil production was completely unforeseen even by the forecast models that took full account of the well-known decline in investment at the time

Rodríguez concluded his study by saying that “economic sanctions and other actions of economic statecraft aimed at the Venezuelan government have strongly impacted the country’s economic and humanitarian conditions” and that “it is hard to deny that they have had a sizable negative impact on living conditions in the country”.

Skeptics would often write off claims that Venezuela’s decline in oil output and inability to recover from the oil crash was a result of U.S. sanctions.

But Rodriguez’s study proved that this was the case, meaning that the tens of thousands of “excess deaths” that resulted from Venezuela’s economic crash due to lack of oil output were indeed a result of U.S. sanctions.

UN Sanctions Expert Details How The Venezuela Sanctions Worked

The UN special rapporteur on sanctions, Alena Douhan wrote a lengthy report on the effect of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and found that the sanctions have caused Venezuela to face “a lack of necessary machinery, spare parts, electricity, water, fuel, gas, food, and medicine”.

Some key findings of the report were that the sanctions blocked “food imports” which constituted “more than 50 percent of food consumption”. Douhan noted that this resulted in “the steady growth of malnourishment,” “with more than 2.5 million people being severely food insecure”.

She also found that the sanctions blocked “medicine imported from abroad”. She noted that the “impediments” made by the sanctions to Venezuela’s healthcare included:

a lack or severe insufficiency of medicines and vaccines; price growth; electricity shortages to supply equipment; water shortages and sanitation problems that affect hygiene; decaying infrastructure because of a lack of maintenance, the absence of spare parts, the unavailability of new equipment due to the lack of resources or refusals to sell or deliver; degraded working conditions and a lack of protective equipment against infectious diseases; a loss of staff in all medical areas because of low salaries; and the termination of construction of hospitals and primary health care centers.

Douhan concluded in her report that:

the economic blockade of Venezuela and the freezing of Central Bank assets have exacerbated pre-existing economic and humanitarian situation by preventing the earning of revenues and the use of resources to develop and maintain infrastructure and for social support programs, which has a devastating effect on the whole population of Venezuela, especially those in extreme poverty, women, children, medical workers, people with disabilities or life-threatening or chronic diseases, and the indigenous population.

(Emphasis: Mine)

She also noted that:

the absence of resources and reluctance of foreign partners, banks, and delivery companies to deal with Venezuelan partners results in the impossibility to buy necessary medical and technological equipment, reagents and spare parts for the repair and maintenance of electricity, gas, water, public transport, telephone and communication systems, schools, hospitals, houses and other public institutions, thus undermining the enjoyment of many human rights, including the right to a decent life.

(Emphasis: Mine )

Trump Was Warned Against Sanctions On Venezuela, He Didn’t Listen

A recent article in the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump, in his first term, was warned that harsh sanctions on Venezuela would crash the economy, and fuel more migration, yet they did not listen.

The article reported that “The Trump White House was warned that harsh sanctions on Venezuela could accelerate that country’s economic collapse and speed an exodus of millions of migrants to neighboring nation” but “the Trump administration nevertheless imposed some of the harshest economic penalties in U.S. history on Venezuela”.

The Post article quoted Thomas Shannon, the former undersecretary for political affairs for the Trump administration who stold the paper “I said the sanctions were going to grind the Venezuelan economy into dust and have huge human consequences, one of which would be out-migration”.

Shannon was quoted saying that “the sanctions clearly helped generate faster out-migration”.

Trump’s Real Motive

The real reason behind Trump’s increase in sanctions is that the U.S. government has been trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government since Hugo Chávez got into power in 1999 and was followed by his successor Nicolas Maduro in 2013.

As early as 2002 the bush administration used the IRI (International Republical Insitute)- the right wing arm of the CIA cutout NED (National Endowment For Democracy)- to fund and train oppostion forces in Venezuela who ousted Hugo Chavez in a military coup.

The coup was soon reversed when his supporters protested the coup and demanded he be reinstated.

The NDI (National Democratic Insitute), the Democratic arm of the NED, also ran a propaganda campaign on social media that sucsesfully swung Venezuela’s national assemebley to the more pro U.S. oppostion in 2015.

In 2019, the Trump administration offically recognized Juan Guaido- an unelected U.S. puppet- as the offical president of Venezuela in an attempt to usurp Maduro in a coup.

The Trump administration also funneled 98 million dollars through USAID to the fake “intrim government” set up by Juan Guaido.

After this, Guaido attempted to storm the capitol in Venezuela to seize power.

In April of 2019 a group of former Venezuelan troops were caught coming from Colombia attempting to overthrow the Maduro government.

The U.S. senator Chris Murphy admitted that the U.S. was behind this coup a year later saying “we tried to construct a kind of coup in April of lat year, and it blew up in our face”.

While pretending that these coup attemps were about “democracy” and “freedom”, the actual motive has always been clear.

In acclaimed director Oliver Stone’s documentary on the 2002 coup againt Hugo Chavez, he interviewed Chavez who told him “The reason behind the coup in Venezuela and the invasion of Iraq is the same: oil”.

In 2019, Trump’s ultra hawkish national security advisor, John Bolton admitting this was the case, telling Fox Business that the motive beind the coup in Venezuela was because

If we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela it would be good for the people of Venezuela and it would be good for the people of the United States, we both have a lot at stake here making this come out the right way.

On the campaign trail, Trump stated this even more crudley, bragging that during his frist term “Venezuela was ready to collapse, we would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door”.

The brutal sacntions on Venezuela are another part in this long-time regime change campaign.

In 2019, Trump’s secreatry of state Mike Pompeo admitted that the point of the starvation sacntions on Iran were to make the living conditions “much worse for the Iranian people” in hopes that “the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime”.

The Venezuela sanctions are meant to have the same effect, keep the population of Venezuela as miserable as possible so that they will rise up against the government, allowing the U.S. to install a puppet government that will give oil companies acsess to the country’s oil.

More Regime Change

This policy from the Trump administration will only cause far more suffering in Venezuela and fuel an even larger migrant crisis at the border, due to the many ecnomic refugees it will create.

This is all in the hopes that the Trump administration can put in a puppet government that will give away the country’s oil.

Trump campainged on “no new wars” but now is unfortunatley bringing back the brutal siege warfare tactics used in the attempted regime change war on Venezuela.